“But it’s more private in the country,” Arundel protests.
“Can’t risk your mother, old bean.”
“Nice and quiet here.”
“So obvious no one’ll think of it.”
“Ever so ‘Purloined Letter.’ “
“Hide in plain sight.”
“But what about the staff?” Arundel asks.
The two Jays cast their gaze slowly around the room. “Don’t see them here, do you?” Jay One asks.
“All tucked in, nice and warm,” Jay Two says with a smug smile.
“You haven’t harmed them, have you?” Arundel looks quite alarmed. “If you have, I’ll"”
“What do you take us for?” Jay One interrupts.
“Strictly professional, we are,” Jay Two adds stoutly.
“Go see for yourself.”
“Snoring away.”
“Nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing at all.”
“If you ring your father and do as we say.”
“Simple enough. A problem with a girl.”
“Tell him it’s urgent.”
“When he’s here, you give him this,” Jay Two says. He pulls out a thick vellum envelope addressed to Sir Benedict Gibson in a thick slanting hand, sealed with a fat blob of crimson wax the color of a Belladonna cocktail. It is Sir Patty’s seal, pinched from his desk during the cleaning after his untimely demise. “It explains all.”
“Nothing to worry about.”
“Nip it in the bud.”
“Don’t want a scandal, you see.”
Too messy.”
“Terribly messy.”
“Bad for business.”
“Bad for the family.”
“He’ll be grateful, mark my word.”
“But he should tell you about it,” Jay One says.
Time you were a member,” Jay Two adds.
“Especially after this.”
“Saving the family honor.”
They smile broadly, pick up their bowler hats, and prepare to leave.
That’s it?” Arundel looks at them, aghast. “You barge in here uninvited, tell me this fantastic story about some private club and my father, and then get up to leave? What am I supposed to do?”
“You are supposed to do as I say, old bean,” Jay One replies. His voice has shifted suddenly, and it is no longer light and breezy. Arundel’s face blanches.
“We’re not messing about,” Jay Two adds. This is serious business. Not for children. We suggest you do as we say, and let your father handle the consequences. Or wait for the consequences to handle you.”
“But what if something goes wrong?” Arundel asks. He is crumpling, poor chap. The shock of having to make an important decision for once in his pampered young life is quite terrifying. Painful, even.
“What can go wrong?” Jay One’s face softens very slightly in the shadows. “Here’s what, though. Should there be a catastrophe, you might ring us at this number.” He hands Arundel a tiny slip of paper. “Ask for Mr. Jay. If and only if there is a catastrophe. Have I made myself clear?”
“Memorize the number, then destroy it,” Jay Two hastens to add.
“We don’t take kindly to prying little boys.”
“Not kindly at all.”
“We know who you are.”
“We know where you live.”
Jay One pats Arundel on the shoulder, and he can’t keep himself from shuddering at the touch. “Don’t you worry. You’re a good son. I’m proud of you, old bean.”
“I’d be proud to call you my son,” Jay Two beams.
“Righty-oh.”
“Mum’s the word.”
“Sleep tight.”
“Nighty-night.”
With that, they saunter out, the heavy door closing slowly behind them. Arundel dashes to the window to watch them leave. There is no one to be found, not a shadow or a breath of wind in Eaton Square. He rubs his eyes to be sure, then looks around the room. They’ve even managed to pocket their scotch glasses. Not a trace of the fantastic Jaybirds remains.
Arundel falls back in a chair and closes his eyes. He’s dreaming it all, that’s it. He drank too much champers with his chums and then stupidly downed a martini, pretending to be grown-up and sophisticated, and he had a bizarre hallucination. Now he’s woken up and can go to bed and forget all about it. Until his eyes fall on the large vellum envelope addressed to his father, still clenched tightly in his hand, Sealed with a thick blotch of scarlet wax.
When Sir Benedict Gibson MP sees the wax seal, his heart will skip a beat and the bile will rise to choke him. It is as if Sir Patty’s hand has risen from the grave to drag him straight down into hell.
Oh ho, he wasn’t dreaming at all.
There are only eight left, we found out courtesy of Sir Benedict Gibson’s panicked messages to the other members, calling for an emergency meeting of the elder statesmen of the Club. Only the inner sanctum, unfortunately, not the junior members. Henley, Morton, Thompson, and Tucker have died. And Wilkes, of course"the dearly departed Sir Patterson Cresswell.
Rest in perpetual torment, you bastards. Consider yourself lucky that you croaked before we had a chance to give you a fond farewell.
So far so good. We know where they’ll be meeting. We’ll be waiting for them.
Our scheme is perfectly elegant in its simplicity, if I do say so. Belladonna thought it up, of course, and relayed her meticulous plans to the Pritch. We’ll have infiltrated the house where they’re meeting, and we’ll add some lovely tranquilizers to the drinks served by our solicitous staff, which will quickly help relax all the members into a pleasant stupor. Add to this cocktail a vaguely threatening demeanor, skill in weaponry, and a certain finesse in skullduggery, and you can pretty much arrange interrogations and other such diversions at your leisure.
First, before these men have woken from their stupor, we will be rifling through wallets and pockets, photographing and recording all necessary documents as our waiters had once done with Sir Patty in the Club Belladonna. We’ll have the real names of the cowards, no longer able to hide behind the privacy of masks and the privilege of rank.
Next, we will arrange them carefully for a lovely portrait session. Photographs are so important for posterity! Or shall I say a series of photographs. In the first one, all the members of the Club will be seated in one cramped row, clad in their habitual garb"the hooded monks’ robes and the masks and the gloves.
Smile for the camera.
Casual viewers, concentrating on the bizarre getup of this charming group, won’t be able to see that, underneath their robes, these men have been rather uncomfortably affixed to their chairs. Casual viewers will most likely be wondering what exactly is going on, especially when they see the caption at the bottom of the photograph: THE MEMBERS OF THE CLUB.
In the second photograph, only the face of the first monk on the left will be exposed. He’ll look a little bit dazed and out of focus, but his features will be clearly recognizable. At the bottom will be the same caption: THE MEMBERS OF THE CLUB.
I want to add some words at the top: WHO ARE YOU? WHY ARE YOU HERE? But in this I am overruled by the Pritch. “Gives too much away, especially if His Lordship were to see them,” he tells me. “Besides, how do we know His Lordship’s pet phrases would make any sense to the other members of the Club?” I am forced to concede. Sometimes even yours truly must bow to the superior judgment of professionals.
I’m sure you’ve figured out Belladonna’s spectacular little scheme by now. One by one, each photograph in this special edition will be released, until each dazed face is unmasked.
Who are you? Why are you here?
One by one, these photographs will be unleashed upon the public. Thousands and thousands of pictures of strange dark monks sitting in a row, printed on flimsy white paper in smudging black ink, will suddenly flood the blessed green isle that once sheltered their sacred clubhouse. The photos will be found everywhere: fluttering like mad butt
erflies in the tube stations, plastered at crazy angles onto billboards and scaffolding, shoved under windshield wipers, taped securely to lampposts in the dead of night. They’ll be delivered in the morning post to select, socially prominent blabbermouths. They’ll mysteriously appear on the desks of members of Parliament, in the backseats of taxis, all over London’s newsrooms. Eager-beaver reporters will be begging to chase down the particulars of this most outrageous and unprecedented situation.
Why, several of the photos will even be slipped under doors in Buckingham Palace.
How shocking!
All London will be agog, because every morning a new photograph will appear, until all of the members are unmasked. The buzz will be even more deafening than the gossip that once surrounded the secretive opening of the Club Belladonna. Who are they, these members of the Club? What exactly is the Club? Is it for drunks, or the very rich? Is it fun? Is it wicked? Is it shameless?
What must I do to join?
All this Pritch calmly explains to the members themselves several hours later. They are fully awake and still uncomfortably immobilized in their chairs, lined up in a neat row. There is a bright light shining in their eyes and they squint in pain. Their heads are throbbing, their mouths are dry, and I their feet are numb. They are, in fact, speechless. That’s because we’ve gagged them with rough rags. Not the kind of fine linen to which they are accustomed.
We prefer a silent audience at the moment. Besides, that’s what they did to her I imagine they are finding a taste of their own medicine distinctly unpalatable.
“Well, gentlemen,” the Pritch is saying. He is clad as they are, in a monk’s robe and a black mask. They have no idea who he is, but they know he’s not one of them His accent gives it away, for one thing. So do his ungloved hands and ringless fingers, and his quick movements. “We’re ever so pleased you have come to be here with us tonight. All of you. Dashwood, Duffield, Francis, Lloyd, Norris, Stapleton, Whitehead. I have something, or rather, some things of an extraordinary nature to show you. I hope you will be as pleased with them as I am.”
He goes over to a desk and picks up one of the newly Printed photographs, then returns and shows it to them. It is the delightful group shot. Pritch silently displays it, pausing before each man and holding it up, putting it close enough to their eyes so they can figure out what it is even if they don’t have their reading glasses. The sound of his footsteps echoes loudly in the room. There is no other sound. They could just as easily have died and woken up in a very hot and unpleasant place.
They are starting to get very nervous. The tension is, in fact, palpable, rising off them in churning waves. They can’t make a noise and they can’t move. They can’t look at one another and ask for advice. This situation is most, well, most unseemly. They can do nothing but silently panic as the Pritch walks back to the desk, then picks up seven other photographs. One by one, he shows each member his mug shot, then the other six.
I should complain about the quality if I were a member. These snaps are not particularly flattering.
“Well, gentlemen,” the Pritch says again. “I shall permit myself to make a rather broad assumption regarding your heretofore unassailably spotless record.” He doesn’t see any need to mention Sir Patty’s small indiscretion. “If I were you, I should be wondering right about now if my beloved Club were to continue with its heretofore unassailably punctual triannual meetings. I should be wondering if this were indeed the end of hundreds of years of tradition. In fact, I should be wondering if I were going to be leaving this house alive.”
He lets that last pithy bit of sentiment hang in the air like, a kiss under mistletoe.
“Should you choose to cooperate with us, gentlemen, you have my word that you will be permitted to leave this house alive and well, in the same condition in which you entered it. Should you wish to leave, this will present itself as another matter altogether. Allow me to refresh your memory of the photographs you have just seen, the first of which will be released to the public tomorrow morning.” He smiles happily, his lips curving below his mask.
“Now, we shall be engaging in a private chat with each of you, and I hope you will do me the great honor of cooperating. Indeed, should you cooperate, the interview process will be as painless and as rapid as possible. Should you not…” He shrugs. His smile deepens.
The lights go out suddenly in the room, and we take the added precaution of slipping hoods on over their heads. A tasteful little touch, don’t you think?
We let them sit and stew for a nice long while, just to deepen their anxiety. Then the first of them is gently hoisted up and carried rather unceremoniously into a small room down the hall, where we’re waiting for him, the tape recorder running. We fix him to another chair, take the hood off, then his gag. He blinks, then shudders. Standing before him are several clones of himself, monks who are not smiling. Unlike the Pritch, who is standing in their midst.
“Who are you?” the man says, trying to bluff and bluster. “What do you want?”
“We know who you are, Duffield. Duffield,” Pritch repeats. “Has a slightly different ring than Sir Horace Halliwell, doesn’t it?”
“You won’t get away with it,” he says.
“Get away with what, dear Duffield? Or do you prefer Sir Horace? Which is the preference of your lovely wife, Lucinda? Your devoted children, Amanda and Christopher"do they call you Duffield or dear old dad? Your colleagues, I do believe, refer to you as QC. You, a Queen’s Counsel, my word. A longtime member of the Club. My word, indeed. There once was a problem with a Duffield, wasn’t there? In 1787. Was he related? Or were you the lucky inheritor of his name?”
Sir Horace says nothing. He is terrified into speechlessness.
“The punishment for unmasking is excommunication forever. A fate worse than death,” Pritch goes on smoothly. He’s listened to Jack’s tape of Sir Patty so often he could recite it in his sleep. “Is it not?”
Sir Horace nods slowly.
“Yet we have taken this pleasurable task upon ourselves,” Pritch continues, waving a hand at the henchmen behind him. “Therefore the rules no longer apply. The Club is finished. Finished forever. Such a shame, really, all those lovely secret assemblies ending in such an unceremonious manner. All those charming women. The thrill of the contact, the coded messages, the clandestine meetings. And the bidding. Ah the bidding. Silenced forever Undone by men masked as yourselves. Unknown. Unknowable.”
He is standing so close to Sir Horace that he can see the pulse ticking madly in his prisoner’s neck.
“Are you prepared to die?”
Silence.
“Are you?” He gives the signal, and two of his henchmen move suddenly closer to Sir Horace, who screams in unrelenting pain.
Too bad the walls of this house are so thick that the other members cannot hear his agony.
“We don’t want you to die,” Pritch says, calmly sipping from a mug of tea. “At least not yet. Not until you’ve been exposed, and told us what we want.”
“Why me?” Sir Horace whispers when he stops moaning.
“It’s always ‘Why me?’ with the likes of you, isn’t it?” The Pritch’s voice is harsh with anger. “As if you’re blameless. As if we’ve singled out you and all the others for no reason whatsoever. You fool. It’s over. Do you understand? The Club is done with. But we’re not done with you. No, my dear sir, not with the likes of you. You won’t be able to escape us, the way the women you auctioned weren’t able to escape you.”
“What do you want?” Sir Horace says.
“Louder,” Pritch replies. “I can’t hear you.”
“What do you want?” he repeats, his voice rising in sheer panic. “What do you want?”
“The eighth man,” Pritch replies. “There are only seven of you here. As for Henley, Morton, Thompson, and Tucker, well, we know they have gone to the auctioneer waiting for them in hell. And Wilkes, of course. I do beg your pardon. I meant to say Sir Patterson Cresswell. Where is the eigh
th? Bates. Where is Bates? Is he dead?”
He’s bluffing. What a pro is our Pritch. We don’t yet know which one of them is His Lordship. We won’t know until the tape recordings of all of them being interrogated are taken back to Belladonna by one of the Pritch’s henchmen. She’s waiting for them, with me and Matteo.
Waiting to hear the sound of that voice.
It’s just a feeling the Pritch has all of a sudden, that His Lordship is the eighth man. The one who isn’t here. The one called Bates. Catching him like this would have been too easy, even after all our careful preparations. He’s too wily. He’s probably been expecting an unmasking ever since her escape nearly nine years before.
“I don’t know,” Sir Horace says. He looks even more terrified at the sound of Bates than he has since we’ve started on him. “I don’t know.”
“Yes you do,” Pritch says. “Either you tell us or you are going to live the rest of your days in excruciating pain and humiliation.”
When Sir Horace is done screaming, Pritch asks him again.
“I can’t tell you,” Sir Horace says after what seems like an interminable time.
“Why not? Why are you protecting him?”
Pritch feels a thrill of nervous excitement run own his spine. He knows. He knows for certain that Bates is our man. Bates must have something, done something to black-mail them into silence. What? Pritch asks himself wildly. What could he have done to buy their silence?
Film, that’s it. The particular and precise arrangements in a little room I vaguely alluded to once upon a time. His Lordship must have filmed them when he arranged their time with her. No wonder he had been so very pleased with his chaise and that sliding little panel in the wall, all those sessions with all those men when she was chained to the wall and his voice was filling her ear, telling her what to do to them. All the members of the Club.
Botheration. The Pritch needs time to regroup. He hands Sir Horace over to one of his colleagues, knowing he’s gotten as much as he can out of this one. The story will be the same from every one of them, unless they tell us where Bates is.
Besides, you don’t need me to tell you the particulars of our encounters with every member of the Club, do you? That would make you as sadistic as they are.
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